Artistic Collaborators
Lucie Bazzo / Benoît Bourdeau / Yves Champagne / Jean Derome / Steeve Dumais / Michel Giroux / Danielle Hébert / Anne-Françoise Jacques / Kathy Kennedy / Frank Martel / Gigi Perron / Yvon Proulx / Catherine Ruel / Karine Sauvé / Martin Tétreault
Lucie Bazzo
Lucie Bazzo has worked in theatre and dance since 1987. Her career notably took flight with Robert Lepage's Trilogie des dragons, an artist with whom she collaborated several times. In dance, she lights the works of a myriad of choreographers, as well as for several singer/songwriters. She also practices her science for museums and the world of performance.
Benoît Bourdeau
Visual artist, founding member of the Clark gallery and of Des mots d’la dynamite. His work has been seen in several collective and individual exhibits. Recently, he was a participant in the
Le Tarot de Montréal exhibit, an invitation by Commissioner Marie-Claude Bouthillier (Maison de la culture Plateau Mont-Royal). He has contributed to many Des mots d’la dynamite projects, as an artistic consultant, stage designer, and webmaster.
Yves Champagne
Visual artist and performer, he created several performance projects and installations in the ’80s. Since 1988, he has contributed to many of the company’s shows as a props master and costume designer. He has worked on numerous Québec and foreign movie productions and currently works as props master.
Jean Derome
“This tireless man who walks through walls with one finger on the pulse of new tendencies, this man-orchestra who remains averse to all routines and who never lacks inspiration has travelled the roads of Québec and the world with his all-terrain musician’s silhouette. He – whose trajectory is punctuated with innumerable encounters – keeps many loves warm and builds a puzzle of a work, one in constant movement, which adjusts without forcing them supposedly random pieces of rock, new music, free jazz, popular traditions, and contemporary music. Every season brings us his abundant and generous new sounds, whether in a new album, in concert, on the screen, or on stage… and it is always music to our ears.” -Stéphane Lépine
Steeve Dumais
Steeve Dumais' hybrid and unconventional practice is embodied in performances, installations, street theatre or surrealistic cabarets. Cofounder of the Mobile Home Company, Steeve Dumais has created and performed in this company's 12 shows. He has performed in several of the Le Pont Bridge Company's shows. For the company, Des mots d’la dynamite, he collaborated in the conception of Là où j’habite/Where I live and Magie lente/Slow Magic.
Michel Giroux
A member of DEI, Michel Giroux has been working in video and multimedia since the early ’80s. In addition to his video productions, performances, and installations, he has contributed to the creation of shows, multimedia works, dance, and contemporary music projects with Geneviève Cadieux, Nathalie Derome, Istvan Kantor, Michel Lemieux, Pauline Vaillancourt... At the same time – and more and more exclusively – he is pursuing a true passion for editing. He has worked on various documentaries with, among others, Marie Brodeur, Michka Saàl, Luc Bourdon, Magnus Isacson, and Martin Duckworth, as well as on a work of fiction with Robert Morin. He is fascinated by the writing/composition process unique to editing and by the proximity and depth of the exchange which occurs between the editor and author as well as with the work this process brings to life. He considers cinema, video, and multimedia to be sensory media.
Danielle Hébert
Photographer and founding member of Des mots d’la dynamite (formerly La Peau des dents). Her photographic installation work has been seen in individual and collective exhibits in Québec (with the Fovéa collective, among others). She has participated in several of the company’s shows, as an artistic consultant, photographer, and stage designer.
Anne-Françoise Jacques
Anne-Françoise Jacques has had an active practice in sound art since 2004. She is interested in systems that turn and in the construction of devices that generate performances, installations, animated film soundtracks, or sometimes nothing! The use of obsolete technology, ridiculous objects and raucous sounds particularly interests her. She performs regularly, alone or as part of various collectives. Her work has been presented at several festivals and cultural sites. This is a first collaboration with the Des mots d’la dynamite company.
Kathy Kennedy
Kathy Kennedy is a sound artist with formal training in visual art as well as classical singing. Her art practice generally involves the voice and issues of interface with technology, often using telephony or radio transmission. Her work engages with public space and physical space through voice. She is also involved in community art, and is a founder of the feminist digital media center in, Studio XX (now Ada-X), as well as the innovative choral group for women, Choeur Maha. Her large-scale sonic installation/performances for many singers and radio, called “sonic choreographies,” as well as the HMMM series have been performed internationally. Ms. Kennedy currently teaches music at Concordia University in Montreal.
She frequently gives lectures and workshops on listening skills, acoustic ecology and vocal improvisation. Her solo performances include a high level of improvisation over lush soundtracks of painstakingly mixed vocals and other sounds to create an immersive world of different voices
Frank Martel
Frank Martel, poet and musican. His life is entirely devoted to the unknown and to his own unique quality of silence. Discovered in 1979 by poet and author Phillipe Haeck, he published two collections of poetry with VLB Éditeur. He learnt how to play guitar and started writing songs. In 1992, he published a third volume with L’Oie de Cravan, La lune a l’air ce soir d’un bout d’ongle arraché. In 1995, he created Dans le ring où tu boxes, a poetry-performance show at La Chapelle. As a solo artist or with Nathalie Derome, he has participated in several events in museums, galleries, and cabarets.
In 2001, with Bernard Falaise, Éloi Deit, and Michel F Côté (L’Ouest céleste), he recorded his first album, Enjambons le désert. In 2003, he released a second album, Sautons ce repas ce midi, which was critically acclaimed; a third album by the same quartet, Yé-Yi-You-Ya, was then released. He has been playing the theremin since 2001. A key player on the musical scene, he has been seen with Diane Labrosse and her Petit Bestiaire (2004), as well as at the Festival de musique actuelle de Victoriaville alongside Michel F Côté (May 2005). In the fall of 2009, he released his fourth album, À l’école du Ara, with Bernard Falaise.
Gigi Perron
The work of Gigi Perron, painter and illustrator, has been seen in individual and collective exhibits at numerous contemporary art events (Québec, Belgium). She has published several collections of comic book art with l’Oie de Cravan and has collaborated with numerous organizations as an illustrator. Her signature style distinguishes itself through a unique imaginary landscape and a remarkable sense of observation of the hazards of daily life. A long-time collaborator, Gigi Perron has participated in several of the company’s shows as a stage designer, costume designer, and artistic consultant. Furthermore, she has orchestrated five editions of the P’tite Tombola, an interdisciplinary party for the whole family, in collaboration with Nathalie Derome.
Yvon Proulx
Yvon Proulx is a sculptor originally from the Eastern townships. His work has been seen in more than thirty group exhibits in Québec, British Columbia, and Scotland, as well as in about fifteen personal exhibits. He has participated in symposiums in Québec and in the Czech Republic. Through the integration of arts in architecture program, he has created a dozen public works, including one at the Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital and another at the Cartier metro station in Laval. In theatre or for the stage, he has participated as a stage designer or props master in numerous shows presented in Estrie and Montréal. In the last ten years, he has become particularly interested in site-specificephemeral art, which he sometimes practices in the city, but most often in the country. He has received grants from both the provincial and federal governments. He lives and works in Montréal.
Catherine Ruel
Since graduating from Lionel-Groulx Cégep’s School of Professional Theatre, Catherine Ruel has been a fixture on stages in Montréal and all over Québec. She has collaborated with numerous directors, including Serge Denoncourt (La grande magia, Théâtre Jean Duceppe), Hugo Bélanger (l'Oiseau vert, Turandot, Pinocchio, Théâtre Denise-Pelletier, Maison Théâtre) and Marie-Josée Bastien (Gloucester, Théâtre La Bordée). One of her most memorable roles was that of Martine in the play Sauce Brune, by Simon Boudreault. For this author, she went on to play other fascinating characters, in the plays Soupers, As is (tel quel) and, more recently, Je suis un produit, presented at Théâtre La Licorne and touring throughout Québec. Since 2024, she has been a member of Théâtre de l’Œil’s Perruche team, and this year she is delighted to join the cast of Des mots d’la dynamite’s production, Le passage secret.
With a Master’s degree in playwriting (UQAM), Catherine Ruel is also constantly inhabited by a desire to research and create. As a cultural mediator for various organizations, she loves sharing this passion and reflecting, with audiences of all ages, on the fundamental questions raised by this age-old art form.
Karine Sauvé
Karine Sauvé privileges a theatre of images that begins with matter, voice, objects and the body. In her projects, she works with puppetry in the broadest sense, like a cross between visual arts and theatre. She holds a DESS in puppet theatre, having graduated with the first contingent in contemporary puppet theatre from UQAM.
She has collaborated on stage and as an author with artists from different disciplines, such as Clea Minaker for Beauty (Youtheater, 2008); Pascal Brullemans and Martin Staes-Polet for Le laboratoire sur l’usage de la parole dans le théâtre pour la petite enfance [The Laboratory of Use of Speech in Theatre for Early Childhood] (Festival Petits bonheurs and Théâtre de la Guimbarde, Belgium, 2013). In 2013, she founded her company Mammifères, which produced Les grands-mères mortes [The dead grandmothers], created in collaboration with David Paquet and Nicolas Letarte. She is one of the co-authors and performers of Scenes from a Tree (2009).
Martin Tétreault
Martin Tétreault, Montréal turntablist of international renown, comes from a visual arts background. He has produced numerous works on compact disc, as well as stage performances, with diverse collaborators: Diane Labrosse, René Lussier, Jean Derome, Michel F Côté, I8U, Otomo Yoshihide, Kevin Drumm, Xavier Charles, Ikue Mori, and several others. Having abandoned the musical citation upon which his work had been built since its beginnings in 1985, he is now exploring the intrinsic qualities of the turntable: motor sounds, parasitic sounds, etc. He also uses needles and prepared surfaces (thank you John Cage) as well as small electronic instruments. This analog noise music approach allows him to finally forgo answering the question, “But what about copyright?”, and to be invited to electronic music events (!). When he wants to take a break from music, he returns to visual arts in order to sand, scrape, and cut up books or magazines…